


Life Is Not A Puzzle You Can Solve

by GothicBeeza



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Car Accidents, Coma, Drunk Sherlock, F/M, Life-Affirming Sex, possible trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 04:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2052957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothicBeeza/pseuds/GothicBeeza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on this Tumblr prompt: Sherlock experiences something personal, something he can't solve or riddle out, and Molly finds him attempting to drink it away. He reveals that he wonders about her, that she's a puzzle he can't solve as well</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Is Not A Puzzle You Can Solve

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this Tumblr Prompt from Seasalticecream32: Sherlock experiences something personal, something he can't solve or riddle out, and Molly finds him attempting to drink it away. He reveals that he wonders about her, that she's a puzzle he can't solve as well
> 
> I don't think I will include this as part of my "Romance-in-the-morgue" series. It's a bit dark for that.

It had been 3 days since the accident. 3 days since his world almost ended. 3 days since two of his best friends in the world, John and Mary Watson, had been coming home from a rare date night, eager to get home and spend the night without their young daughter. 3 days, since the taxi they had been in had swerved off the road, and hit a light pole. 3 days, since they both slipped into comas.

In those 3 days Sherlock had become more unstable than usual. After he had received the call, looked over their frail and beaten bodies he stormed into action, trying to find someone to blame. He didn’t know if they were going to survive, and someone had to pay for almost taking away his best friends, and Amanda’s parents. He would solve this mystery...he had to.

By the end of the first day he had run out of people to interview (more like interrogate), having interviewed every single witness to the incident - unsurprisingly few seeing as it had occurred at 12:30am on a Thursday night. He had also run out of cigarettes.

By the end of the second day, the taxi driver had died, unfortunately (or fortunately for the cabbie) before Sherlock had had a chance to interview him. Part of him knew that this could have been a simple accident, but the stronger part of him was convinced that this was some sort of conspiracy, some new player of the game out to destroy him - and everyone he loved. He didn’t sleep again that night, and didn’t even have any of the precious heroin he needed to get through this ordeal. Mycroft had successfully seen to that

By the end of the third day, he felt broken. D.I Lestrade called him to inform him that the incident (Really Sherlock, your best friends are dying and you continue to call it an “incident”) had been ruled a complete accident, (the driver over-steered, there was some debris on the road that caused the car to lose control). Sherlock couldn’t handle this news. Puzzles! Yes. Elaborate conspiracies! Yes. Simple accidents that no-one had any control over, well that was more than he could take.

His mind was a swirling tempest, with so many mundane facts in his mind palace storming at the front, none of them particularly useful for how to deal with someone falling into a coma. Oh he knew the medical side of things of course - even knew the mortality rate - but trying to cope with that knowledge was a completely different story.

How had he allowed himself to become so sentimental, so affected? Before John had come into his life, he has been a purely logical being, shunning sentiment entirely. Now, he had let it infect his life, to the point where losing these people made him dizzy, his heart beating so hard out of his chest he could barely breath. He needed to numb this, needed to escape, and his mind palace wasn’t enough anymore. He simply needed to stop thinking.

He stopped in his tracks, realising that this whole time he had been wandering the streets of London. Almost serendipitously, he had stopped out the front of a corner deli - still open - and selling liquor. This was just swapping one vice for another, but he knew he needed something - ANYTHING - to take him away. Without giving it a second thought, he stepped inside.

Molly Hooper had stopped in at the ICU before starting her shift for the day. It hurt so much to see her dearest friends lying so lifeless, when just a few days ago they had all gotten together and were making fun of some of the new interns. There were signs that Sherlock had visited - but obviously not stayed. She knew it would be too painful for him, just standing by, feeling useless. He would be out trying to solve the case. Not that there would be much of one - Greg had told her earlier that morning that it was probably going to be ruled an accident. She chewed her lip at this, worrying about how Sherlock would react to this.

Molly sighed as she walked through the door to the morgue, saying a little pray that John and Mary wouldn’t end up on her table. She steeled herself to begin her shift, picking up the paperwork for the first body - Elena Spencer, 47, another car accident victim. Unrelated, of course, but still difficult to bear. It was going to be a long night.

Just 2 hours into her shift, and Molly was getting weary. She decided to take a break, heading down to the canteen to grab a coffee and something small to eat. She needed to be away from the death and despair that normally she would be able to keep from taking over her morgue. Her thoughts kept returning to her friends, and although she should be more worried about them, in her heart she knew they would be ok. It was Sherlock that she really worried about. At that thought she reached into her pocket, checking her phone.  
No messages. Not that she expected one, but they had become closer in the last few months. She hoped that if he was having a danger night, he would reach out to her.

Break done, Molly slowly got up, and made her way make down to the morgue, thinking about the pile of paperwork for her in her office.  
She opened the door, and almost yelled, there was a dark mass in the corner, all huddle up. It took a closer inspection to realise it was Sherlock, completely drunk, and completely broken.

“Oh Sherlock”, she cried, rushing to his side.

He smelled of moderately priced whiskey (which she could tell as he still had the bottle in his hand), his clothes dishevelled, and his eyes blotchy, as though he had been holding back tears. He was teetering on the precipice of despair, and Molly needed to claw him back.

“It’s no good Molly” he slurred.

“What’s no good Sherlock” she murmured, holding his face in her hands.

“There’s no mystery. No...Case”, he sounded disgusted “and even if there was one, I can’t solve it. I’m useless”.

His shoulders slumped. He looked like a man defeated. It broke Molly’s heart into a million pieces to see him like this. It reminded her of the nights after his fall, when he was so utterly lost. This was more though, he had more than lost his way.

“You’re not useless” she said, holding back her tears, “Sometimes there just isn’t a case to solve. Some things in life are so frustratingly simple, when we least want them to be. Not everything in life is a puzzle to be solved”.

“You’re a puzzle Molly” Sherlock suddenly looked up at her. She was taken aback.

“No I’m not. I’m just me”.

“Exactly. You, Molly Hooper, are the greatest mystery to me”.

She didn’t quite know how to take this, sitting back on her heels and just staring at him, in complete disbelief.

He continued “I can see the pieces of you: your kindness, your compassion, your loyalty, your -“ he gulped “-unwavering love. How you seem to know exactly what I need, when I need it” He started to become quite passionate, placing his hands over Molly.  
“You stand there, every day thinking that you aren’t beautiful, and you aren’t worthy, but Molly you are so wrong”

By now tears are freeing flowing down Sherlocks beautiful face, and Molly can feel hers beginning.

“You are the most beautiful creature, and you deserve to be loved. It is I that is unworthy of you”.

He takes a quick steeling breath, plunging on before she has a chance to interrupt him.

“I have been so confused about what it is that I feel for you….that I have been feeling for you...for such a long time. I pushed it away, I was so afraid that after all this time, you wouldn't want me anymore. I can’t lose you Molly…..and not if John and Mary are…”

He can’t continue, completely breaking down into noisy, racking sobs. Molly pulled him close to her, holding him in a tight embrace. So many words come to mind at this moment - she wants to tell him that he will never lose her, that nothing in the world will stop her from loving him, no matter how hard she tries, that John and Mary are so strong and will overcome this. The words are there, but that’s not what he needs right now.

She quickly pulls out her phone, sending a quick text to Mike, her supervisor, saying that she was heading home, and taking Sherlock with her. No point in lying. In this sort of a situation she was sure he would understand.

Gathering strength she didn’t know she had, she helped Sherlock to his feet, grabbed his belstaff of the table to hide his whiskey in, and headed out the front to hail a cab. No words were needed; he would follow her to the ends of the earth. And now she knew it.  
As they pulled up outside of Molly’s apartment, she quickly paid the cabbie, and led Sherlock upstairs. She unlocked the door, and let him in.

He went over to his favourite chair, the one he seemed to frequent more and more these days, and sat down, his head in his hands, trying to pull himself together. Molly sat at his feet, and lifted his chin to look at her. With her other hand, she pulled the whiskey out from under the belstaff.

“I’m here for you tonight, no matter what” she smiled.

Sherlock looked at her, shocked, as she opened the bottle and downed a sizable amount. Part of her knew that she should be the responsible one, supervise Sherlock as he drowned his sorrows - but she had had a lousy night too, and deserved to get drunk with the man she loved.

They started passing the bottle between them, at first in silence, but then started talking of inconsequential things, trying to get their minds off the last few days. When they ran out of whiskey, Molly raided the small selection she kept under the kitchen island, coming up with some vodka and a half emptied shot bucket. From there the night took a turn for the better. It seemed that rather than mourn their barely-alive friends, Sherlock and Molly decided they would celebrate their lives, by taking shots and saluting their friends. It wasn’t long until Molly somehow ended up in Sherlock’s lap, giggling at stories that he told her of the rare other occasions that he and John had ended up drunk and the fights he would constantly get in over his beloved subject of ash.

“I know ash!” Sherlock declared rather loudly, to no one in particular. Molly started giggling hysterically into his chest, fisting at his shirt as she tried to control herself. This caused Sherlock to start laughing as well. Soon they were curled up in each other’s arms, tears streaming down their faces from laughter. He leaned down to place a kiss on her forehead, just as she was looking up to place one on his cheek, resulting in their lips meeting. The initial kiss was light, but once they both realised what had happened, the result was explosive.

Sherlock pulled Molly higher into his lap, forcing her to straddle him, as their tongues went wild. His hands frantically pulling at the blouse she was wearing, her hands desperately tugging at his trousers. When they finally came up for air, Molly appeared to come to her senses.

“Are you sure about this? I don’t want to take advantage of you”.

He was stunned, even at a time like this, with her hand down his pants and his caressing her breast, she still wanted to make sure he was OK.

“Molly, I have never wanted anything more in my entire life” he said sincerely, his voice thick with desire.

“Then take me to the bedroom, now” she practically demanded.

Molly wrapped her legs around him, as he held her close, and carried her into his bedroom, dropping her down before covering her body with his own. Sherlock was completely lost in her. He knew then that she was not some puzzle to be solved, but that she was the missing piece in the puzzle that was his life. As he kissed her intensely, burying himself inside her, making her cry out his name, he knew he never wanted this to stop, that he was never going to lose Molly again. Molly was life.  
If Molly had thought this was a bad idea, all those thoughts immediately left her as her took her, sensing that this is exactly what he needed, what she needed. They needed each other and nothing would come between them again. Their climaxes built up together, both of them drowning in the sensation of the other. Sherlock was calling her name as they came, Molly seeing nothing but stars, and his wonderful face swimming before her. They cuddle in the afterglow of the most life-affirming sex they had ever had.  
No matter what came tomorrow, they would face it together.

As Molly drifted off to sleep, she noticed Sherlock reaching for his phone that had just received a text. In her sleepy haze, she saw his face light up, and murmur against her forehead, “They are awake….they will live.”


End file.
